RAGBRAI website Page 2
Staff promotions at Hy-Vee Page 3
UNITED WE STAND
TUESDAY Mar. 10, 2015
OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF HARDIN COUNTY
Newsbriefs National Honor Society Induction Ceremony March 11 – 2 p.m. SHHS Auditorium On Wednesday, March 11, SHHS will be hosting its annual National Honor Society Induction ceremony. The event will begin at 2 p.m. in the SHHS auditorium, and will conclude around 2:45 p.m. This event is held during the school day, and attended by the entire SHHS student body, in the hopes that this celebration of high standards will serve as motivation for all SHHS students. This event is a separate event from other SHHS annual ceremonies. The Senior Awards Night, held May 5 at 7 p.m., will honor scholarship and academic achievement. The SHHS Baccalaureate will be held May 13 at 7 p.m., in the auditorium. Finally, SHHS Commencement is May 17 at 1:30 p.m. Timothy Christian Annual Steak Supper March 17 Timothy Christian School will be holding their Annual Steak Supper on Tuesday, March 17 from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the First Christian Reformed Church, 2.5 miles west of Wellsburg. No advance tickets. Free-will donation. Gluten/Sugar Free and Carryout available. Eldora Veterans Monument Brunch Fundraiser March 15 The Eldora Veterans Monument Committee will be sponsoring a Brunch Fundraiser at Dorothy’s Senior Center in Eldora on Sunday, March 15, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Eldora Kiwanis Club will be assisting with this fundraiser. Free Will Donation. Proceeds go towards Eldora Veterans Monument.
RAGBRAI website up and running See page 2 for the latest on the kickoff of the Eldora RAGBRAI informational web site. It will offer uupdates daily on the progress of planning.
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Marshalltown bikers look to Greenbelt By Rick Patrie News Editor MARSHALLTOWN – He is coming here for RAGBRAI, but unlike a lot of the 15,000 other visitors, Dr. Terry Briggs, a retired Marshalltown physician, looks forward to continuing to bike through Eldora and Hardin County long after RAGBRAI is in the history books. Briggs is active with Trails Inc. a not for profit group gradually knitting up a network of relationships which over time will become The Iowa River Scenic Nature Trail. The trail has seen lots of variations on that name, but it is the one you’ve heard about over and over for two years now, as salvagers tore up the Iowa River Railroad south of Steamboat Rock to Marshalltown. The rail bed has been transferred to the custody of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, and eventually will go fully to the trails group. The idea is to build a multi-use trail running all the way from just north of Steamboat to Marshalltown. Though it will be open to a wide range of uses, motorized and not, it is generally expected the biggest users will come from the bicycling community in the two counties. Briggs says there is already a very active group of cyclists down in Marshalltown, and they look to the trail development as a big step toward giving bikers there a much easier and much safer access to bicycling routes north of Marshalltown and into Hardin County. Right now, with the developments along highway 330 in Marshalltown, bikers have to navigate some heavily travelled roadways before they
can finally gain access to routes to Liscomb and up toward Union and points north in Hardin County. The trails project has a core group of active supporters here in Hardin County but they are not alone. There is that like-minded group in Marshalltown and Marshall County. Right now the Marshall and Hardin groups are becoming one group, all of them waiting on the final touches to the reclamation effort before the first trail installations this summer. Rails and ties were stripped up over the course of the last couple of summers, and everyone now agrees that the salvage job was a little bigger and more time consuming than they had first anticipated. Nevertheless, it is all but complete, and once it is then the title to the property can transfer from the holder, Heritage Foundation, to the public bodies along the route which will assume custody. Since the beginning, those counties and cities have made clear that development of the trail, and completing the 30 plus mile project, will proceed at a pace dictated by grants and gifts, and not draw on taxpayers. The trail route comes with a lot of natural features. The scenery is already in place naturally, Briggs says, but the surface has to be upgraded and will, according to current plans, be done starting in Marshalltown and slowly moving north, and starting just north of Steamboat Rock and slowly moving south. Briggs says everyone realizes this will be considerably more than (continued on page 2)
Marshall County enthusiasts look forward to pedalling Hardin County long after RAGBRAI has come and gone
Members of the Iowa River Nature Trail contingent from Marshalltown are pushing the project which they hope will one day link Steamboat Rock and Marshalltown along the old route of the railway of the same name. Dr. Terry Briggs on the far right says he will be here in Eldora for RAGBRAI, he hasn’t missed many, and he hopes to be seeing a lot of Hardin County when the bike and other recreational modes trail comes to fruition. One scene along the route is a photo from the group’s website, taken by Eldora’s Heidi Mitchell.
City hall staffers will deliver elderly meals By Rick Patrie News Editor ELDORA – Two members of the Eldora city administration and a group of students from the State Training School will be part of the project when Northeast Iowa Area Agency on Aging (NEI3A) participates in Community Champions Week as part of its March for Meals campaign. The volunteers will be part of
the meals delivery program in the community. During this week community “champions” from NEI3A’s 18 county service area will join thousands of others across the country to participate in this event to show their support for the older individuals in their community. The “champions” participating here are Eldora’s City Administrator Bruce Bierma, Economic
Development Director, Deb Crosser and staff and students from the State Training School. Deb has volunteered to deliver meals Wednesday, March 18, and Bruce has volunteered for Wednesday, March 25. Staff and students from the State Training School deliver meals each Thursday. “We not only provide a nutritious hot meal for older individuals that are not able to get out, but we
also provide human contact that may be lacking for many of these individuals,” said Lynette Miller, NEI3A Service Specialist in Eldora. “We rely on volunteers every day to help deliver meals. Through events like the Community Champions Week, we hope to bring awareness about our program and hopefully get more people interested in volunteering.” In 2014 NEI3A and volunteers served 22, 374 meals to
seniors in Hardin County. NEI3A offers both congregate and home delivered meals to people age 60 and over on a contribution basis. If you would like more information about NEI3A’s meal program, call LifeLong Links toll free at 877538-0508 or call Dorothy’s Healthy Lifestyle Senior Center at 641-8585152. March for Meals is a national (continued on page 2)
Lawmaker explains tough call on the gas tax hike Stresses commitment that money will go to roads
By Rick Patrie News Editor HARDIN COUNTY – Dave Deyoe parted company with the other house member representing Hardin County, and in his dispatch to local newspapers this past week he explained his qualified support for the gas tax increase signed off on by the Governor and approved with something like bipartisanship recently. Deyoe represents the southern half of Hardin County. What follows are Deyoe’s thoughts on backing the increase. The other house member, Pat Grassley who represents the north half of Hardin County wrote in a recent legislative letter to us, of his misgivings about the increase. Here is Deyoe’s report. The Deyoe Dispatch By State Representative Dave Deyoe Fallacies from the Fuel Tax Debate
Every bill debated in the Legislature has pros and cons. Often people on one side of an issue may view some facts as more important than the facts that support the other side’s argument. This is natural since facts may vary in importance. During the debate on the fuel tax that occurred over the past several weeks, some of the arguments were more fiction than fact. The following are some examples. That the money will not be spent on roads and bridges. Probably one of the biggest misconceptions the public has about road funding is that state fuel tax money goes to bike trails, public transit, beautification projects, etc. The reality is that 100% of state fuel tax dollars are constitutionally protected, and spending must be directly related to the roads. Much of the blame for the confusion is related to the way that federal fuel taxes are spent and the accompanying federal
rules. That the fuel tax is a declining or increasing revenue source. I have heard that the fuel tax is already providing more revenue each year because there are more cars and miles driven. I have also heard that because cars are more efficient and because of hybrid/electric vehicles that the fuel tax is a declining revenue source. The truth is that the fuel tax is probably the most stable source of revenue we have. Here are the last 10 years revenue numbers for the Motor Fuel Tax starting with 2005 (in millions): $430.1, $431.1, $433.4, $433.6, $422.8, $432.0, $437.7, $430.1, $431.3, $438.0. That because farmers don’t pay tax for off-road fuel they are not contributing to the roads. Rural property owners pay from $2.25-$3.00/ $1000 of taxable value for county roads. This past year, approximately $166 million was transferred to
secondary roads from rural property taxpayers statewide. As a point of reference, 32.5% of the $438 million of motor fuel tax goes to county roads, meaning only $142 million in fuel tax from all other vehicles are currently supporting county roads. Some of these other vehicles include farm trucks, that haul most grain and livestock to market, which already pay the same fuel taxes as everyone else. That because of the TIME-21 Fund not enough will go to rural roads and too much goes to the DOT. The TIME-21 legislation that passed in 2007 dictated that all new revenue from vehicle fees or fuel taxes would be allocated to county roads at 20% versus the 32.5% in the old road use formula with the extra going to the DOT and cities. The bill that passed directed that all the new revenue would be allocated according to the old formula, which is more beneficial to rural roads. That our gas taxes will now be
higher than all the states around us but Wisconsin. This statistic is misleading. Most Iowa drivers fill up with 10% ethanol blend which will now be taxed at 29 cents. This will be about the same as Minnesota unless they raise their taxes by 2 cents this year (and 2 cents every year for the foreseeable future) as they are proposing. Iowa does not charge any sales tax on fuel like Illinois, Michigan and Indiana which means we are still significantly lower than them (we also do not have toll roads). Missouri is the one state that will be significantly less than us with a gas tax of 17 cents. They have been borrowing money to fix their roads and the Missouri DOT now spends close to $300 million per year to pay off past debt. The voters this past fall defeated a proposal to raise sales taxes ¾ cent for roads. In an example of how different the debate can be from state to state, a conservative think tank, the Show-Me Institute (continued on page 2)
State Representative Dave Deyoe